Paula Hawkins - The Girl on the Train

” A steam train of a thriller! ”

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

In my last review, I said that I thought there might be ruffled feathers because of it. Well, I don’t think it will now that I have finished it. In fact, I rather enjoyed it, although it’s not the best book I’ve read. Why is that? Let’s see …

My earlier comment about ruffled feathers were due to me being totally confused as to what was going on and who was doing what and why. Once I got that sorted in my mind I was able to get on with it a lot better. For the odd few who perhaps haven’t read it, it’s about a divorced drunk who travels backwards and forwards to London on the train, which passes her old home. At the same time, she works up a fantasy over the couple who live a few doors from her old home.

The story moves on, with jumps between some of the main characters (one of the reasons I got confused I think), and in one of these Rachel, the main character thinks back to how she became the lush she now is. She sees her inability to conceive a child as being the main reason and sums it up with the words, ‘I’m not beautiful, and can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless.’ But is she really worthless? Ah well, you need to real it to find out.

Part of the story takes place in Holkham, in North Norfolk, an area I know fairly well from my regular visits that I used to take when I went bird watching there. The result is that there’s a few errors in how Hawkins describes the area, however, it doesn’t spoil the overall story. So go on, have a go at it.

What’s next from me then … not sure, just added ten new titles from Astley Book Farm to my TBR pile. It will be either another Asimov, or a Heinlein that I don’t remember reading before.

Reviewed by:

Ron Clark

Added 20th April 2017

More Reviews By
Ron Clark

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

After reading and loving Gone Girl, when I heard The Girl on the Train mentioned on the Radio 2 book club I thought it might be worth trying another thriller. It’s not a genre I have really dipped into in the past but it never hurts to read something a bit different and it sounded really good.

Rachel catches the same commuter train each morning, and from here you catch up with her thoughts, created by triggers on her journey. She’s been through an emotional break up but as the book continues you discover she’s not the only one having a hard time and pretty soon there’s a murder.

The first thing I’d note is to pay attention, I’m going to blame reading on several nightcaps but I wasn’t paying much attention to the chapter names and I found myself confusing Rachel with Megan. I have to admit there weren’t many characters in this book with likeable traits and this might be part of the reason I confused them. I truly ended up wanting to murder each and every one of them, and what a thriller that would have made!

I certainly don’t want to put readers off, it was a compelling book and as dislikeable as I found the characters, I found it hard to put down, polishing it off in a couple of sittings.

Girl on the Train has had a lot of comparisons made to Gone Girl, and if you found you were frustrated with the ending of the latter then you should find Girl on the Train a lot more acceptable. Without posting spoilers, there’s a traditional thriller ending, and while I didn’t guess what was going to happen, it wasn’t a huge surprise either.

I’m sure we’ve all watched the lives of others through their little jewelled windows from the train, but you may never see them the same way again after Girl on the Train!